Contrast in taskmanager low on selected window

[rkunschke]

Describe the bug
I am using kde-material-you-colors with expressive theme. But I think the problem is the same with all themes.
The text of the selected task in the taskmanager is a bit low contrast when using the dark theme. I think the text color of selected tasks should be black when using the dark theme.

In contrast the light theme have a decent contrast despite having the same color on active and inactive tasks.

I don't know if it's possible to just change the text color just for the active task in the task manager.
If it's isn't possible I think this is only fixable in upstream.

[luisbocanegra]

Unfortunately the color of the highlight is used in many other places, I could try to account for this case but it will make everything else that uses the same color also be affected.

Ultimately this can only be solved by more granular control for each element and states and less auto-generated colors. Something that can only be done by upstream (I could try but I am a C++ noob).

Possible workaround

If I recall correctly, plasma styles can bundle color scheme, maybe we could make a fork of the Breeze plasma theme that changes just these colors, leaving everything else inherit the default, or even changing the SVG in such a way that makes the highlight more readable.

[luisbocanegra]

There are also plans for a new theming system for KDE, so I am not sure if a change like this would be worth doing, IMO it would be more feasible to implement these design decisions on the new one.

[rkunschke]

Possible workaround

If I recall correctly, plasma styles can bundle color scheme, maybe we could make a fork of the Breeze plasma theme that changes just these colors, leaving everything else inherit the default, or even changing the SVG in such a way that makes the highlight more readable.

I've tried out the workaround and changed the svg. I've just opened a copy of the breeze-plasma style and edited the widget/tasks svg file with inkscape. That what it looked like before editing:

When I raised up the lightness and that improved the contrast.
But when I am changed the accent color, the task manager selection color stopped changing with it after that editing.

I don't really understand how that works. Maybe I will figure that out later that day/week when I have more time.
Than this would resolve the issue.

Do you think the colors in that svg are the only colors the taskmanager could have or is there some dynamic component which is changing the svg itself?

[luisbocanegra]

Do you think the colors in that svg are the only colors the taskmanager could have or is there some dynamic component which is changing the svg itself?

There are some css definitions close to the start of the css file, these are replaced with the current color scheme, when you change it to something else you're likely setting a fixed color, breaking the dynamic change.

The Task Manager widget will then (somehow) decide which style to take from the SVG.

So you will need to change it in a way that doesn't override these rules (like opacity and shape), maybe there is a way to change the saturation/lightness without forcing fixed color but I don't really know much about SVG (main reason why I made Panel Colorizer 😅).

Docs: Plasma themes and plugins / Plasma Style tutorial / System and accent colors